


Everything Will Be F(ai)n

by PurgatoryDream



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Don't wanna spoil where this is gonna go lmao., I'm Bad At Tags., M/M, i'll add more tags as the story progresses!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23984233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurgatoryDream/pseuds/PurgatoryDream
Summary: (Post S1 - during the start of S2)When Ai comes back to Yusaku after finding out the Cyberse World has been completely destroyed, he notices some things have changed with his Originator's behavior: the already distant and cold teenager has become more irritable all of a sudden, and he can't help but feel concern over what's happening behind the scenes. Does the problem lie with Yusaku? Does the problem lie with himself?Regardless of the answer, one thing is for sure: he wants to fix it.
Relationships: Ai | Ignis/Fujiki Yuusaku
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. Lonely Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Yo! This is... the first fanfiction I've posted in quite a long time. I don't really have much to say here, I just hope you enjoy it: I'm a huge fan of Aiballshipping (Ai/Yusaku) in general, and I feel like there's a lot of potential when it comes to writing a story between these two characters. Though I'll try not to spoil too much, this fanfiction WILL contain spoilers for all of Season 1. It'd be impossible not to.
> 
> Perhaps there'll be a few Season 2 spoilers, but there are none so far. If that changes any time soon, I'll make sure to notify you all through notes.
> 
> Either way, before I get side-tracked, I hope you enjoy reading this! Feel free to leave some criticism/advice/whatever in the comments, I'll be super glad to hear about it, as I'm really really trying to improve my writing as much as possible. Goooooodbye!

Everyone says a lot of things about the moon. They say the night sky of Den City is a sight like no other, one that everyone should see at least once in their lives; they say that young couples will be blessed by the gentle white light of the pure moon standing above them, as though it were a universal mistletoe placed by Cupid in order to solidify their newfound love; they say the night activities in the city are some of the best ways to lose oneself in the ticking of a clock that would turn an ephemeral amount of time into eternal memories engraved into their brains. Everyone says a lot of things about the moon in Den City, but they were all false.

Under the guise of marketing and tourism, these things people ‘said’ became a surefire way to increase revenue in otherwise standard businesses that didn’t have anything special: it was the same tactic that had led other festivities and random dates into becoming a day when people would raid supermarkets, believing that it was ‘normal’ to participate in these things and that the strange people would be the ones not doing so. Yusaku constantly looked out the window, losing himself in the darkness that coated the world with an entirely new coat of paint compared to the light yellow that gracefully brushed over the city’s skyscrapers during the day. From inside his dimly lit room, he saw nothing but a lonely moon floating in the abyss: there were no stars it could confide in, no other light in the sky to keep it company, because the light pollution of the city had driven them all away. And yet, the moon kept glowing that pure white, shining above the city. Sometimes, Yusaku stretched out his arm towards the satellite to reach it, to brush his fingers against its surface; however, it was impossible for flesh, tied down to the ground by gravity, to cover the distance that separated them. Even then, he stayed like that for a few seconds, thinking.

If the moon really blessed couples with love, did someone bless the moon with it too? Or would it be stuck in the endless black of the night forever, unreachable and alone? For some reason, that thought always made the blue-haired boy flinch slightly, retracting his fingers and hand into the ill-lighted room once more, before clenching them into a first that he pressed against the left side of his chest. He’d never really been the type to care about poetry nor metaphors but thinking about that loneliness made his heart ache within its rib cage.

“Yu?” called a familiar voice from the Duel Disk resting next to him, on top of the table where scattered papers containing his homework remained blank. “Is there something outside the window, or are you just procrastinating again? Eheh, you’re never going to finish your assignments at this rate!”

Turning his head around slightly and glancing downwards towards the purple glow of the device’s display, Yusaku found that tiny purple creature looking at him with a smug expression in his face. Even though he had no lips to convey a smirk with, the shape his eyes adopted when his synthetic-like skin was everything he needed to imagine the grin. The teenager rolled his eyes before moving back towards the desk and sitting down on the chair with an exasperated sigh, now facing the unanswered questions once more. They weren’t really _hard_ per se: the difficult lied in motivating himself enough to grab the pen and put effort into committing each and every letter and number to paper, a task that exponentially made the pen’s weight increase. Regardless, he couldn’t really stop now, or else Ai would be bugging him about it until he went to sleep.

Really, why _did_ the AI care about Yusaku’s homework, in the first place? It’s not like Ai had anything to gain from this. It was probably just another way for him to poke fun at Yusaku, considering he constantly poked at the mistakes he made and chuckled along the way. Right, he probably just had _fun_ watching him struggle through something. The 16-year-old with blue hair started scribbling down a few numbers, calculating the area between two given functions in the paper.

“No, no!” Ai extended his arm towards the paper, pointing towards a certain spot in the drawing. “You can’t just _add_ the area under the X-axis! Those have a negative Y value!”

“So? The exercise is clearly asking me to, or else I wouldn’t have the full area between them,” Yusaku explained, narrowing his eyes slightly. He knew exactly where this was going, and he really didn’t feel like going through another of Ai’s math lessons when he didn’t ask for one.

“When you perform an integral in intervals where the function is below the X-axis, you’ll get a negative value” —the artificial intelligence pressed his fingertip against the formula— “which will, in turn, give you an incorrect value. You have to _subtract_ the area. Negative times negative equals positive. _That_ ’ _s_ how you’re meant to solve this.”

“Thank you, _teacher_.”

Though Yusaku had meant that remark as a sarcastic one, with a groan building up underneath the words he said, Ai simply took it as a compliment and chuckled nonchalantly. As much as he knew that the AI was right, the way he corrected him felt like a red pen stabbing right through his brain, with a sharp pain that made him feel slightly self-conscious of the fact he hadn’t realized the answer by himself. Instinctively, he strangled the pen he was holding tighter, slamming its tip on the paper and crossing out the calculations he’d done. The sentient artificial intelligence flinched slightly at that, sinking down into the Duel Disk’s display. He didn’t understand the source of Yusaku’s frustrated reaction; and, in the eyes of the teenager, it was something Ai would never be able to understand.

An uncomfortable and loud silence filled the heavy atmosphere, and neither of them dared to break it. For the following hour, the only sounds in that room were those of the pen’s writing and the flipping of pages; the air became progressively thinner, and the tension that had built up earlier dissipated into thin air: these moments of theirs didn’t normally last too long, and yet…

“Hey, Yu,” the Ignis made his way outside the Duel Disk again.

“What is it?” Yusaku replied quite quickly, looking at his now completed worksheets.

“You know, lately you’ve been more irritable,” Ai lied down on top of the table, looking up towards Yusaku with his arms crossing behind his head. “Plus, you haven’t really been doing much except for _dueling_ either…”

“Is that so.” Yusaku raised an eyebrow, throwing a statement into the air that didn’t really answer Ai’s doubts. Instead, it was more of a nonchalant answer that dismissed the artificial intelligence’s concerns.

“Yeah, you’re being _weirder_ than usual, and that’s saying a _lot_ , considering you’re not exactly the icon of normalcy.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“Nothing you do is normal, Yu—”

“I was talking about the part about me acting different lately, Ai,” the teenager slowly pushed his chair away from the desk, rising to his feet slowly with the objective of taking a shower. Considering how late it was, he should probably take one.

“Regardless of what you meant, I know I’m right. You weren’t like this while we were chasing the Knights of Hanoi. Sure, you were still a bit distant and stoic, but now it feels like you’re that and _more_ ,” Ai pointed out, jumping out of the Duel Disk and crossing his arms, standing behind Yusaku. “Did something happen while I was gone? Tell me, Yu. I’ll infect their computer with a Trojan virus and change their files into very threatening text files.”

He said that last part with an evil-like chuckle, but he was quickly interrupted by the sound of the bathroom being closed and the shower being turned on.

“Nothing’s happened, I’m exactly the same,” Yusaku’s voice said from the bathroom, slightly muffled by the cascading noises of water drops raining down on him. Ai knew there was no point in insisting, so he gave up and attempted to figure out another way of getting information.

There had to be some way of gathering information, wasn’t there? Someone who’d been there all those months, observing Yusaku… It wasn’t as though there’d be many options, considering the average amount of people the teenager talked to every day was closer to 0 than to 1. The first person Ai could think of was Shoichi, as his Originator was very close to the man, but something about their relationship felt much more professional than a friendly one: they were united by their goals and ideals, and probably not much more, so he probably wouldn’t know much about Yusaku emotionally. In fact, the more Ai thought about it, was there _anyone_ who’d been close to Yusaku in a non-professional way? The teenager _really_ needed to find some friends, and that was that.

With a deep sigh, the artificial intelligence allowed his own body to fall to the ground with open arms, allowing the gravity of the world take over him completely. With his arms spread wide open, he meditated silently while staring at the white ceiling through the pitch-black shading of the room. Why was Yusaku such a hard person to crack?

“I swear, it feels like I’m talking to a wall!”

Ai’s frustrated groan wasn’t too loud, but there was still an answer from somewhere in the room. A whirring sound got closer and closer to him, so the Ignis moved his head slightly in order to find the source of the noise, though he could already recognize it due to its familiarity. It didn’t take long for _her_ to cloud his view, now showing a bright LCD screen instead of the dark room he was observing earlier. It was impossible not to recognize her cheery, yet slightly obnoxious and mechanical sounding, voice: Roboppy’s pixilated smile was staring down at him.

“Yo, my loyal minion,” the Ignis nonchalantly said, now fixated on Roboppy’s expression. “What is it? Ai was just doing some thinking.”

“Your puns are terrible, Master,” her mechanical laughter followed suit.

Though human robots were normally just supposed to do their usual tasks and nothing more, Ai had managed to _teach_ Roboppy a little bit about being alive. By improving her programming and hardware, the Ignis had granted her a some sort of free will: because of that, she could make remarks like the one she just did or laugh like she currently did. Perhaps it was weird, but it made the robot’s reactions and presence much brighter inside the somberness of Yusaku’s room.

“Of course, of course,” Ai smirked slightly, jumping up from the ground and giving Roboppy’s head a few pats. “A stupid robot wouldn’t have the necessary intellect to understand my superior jokes. No problem though, Ai will modify you~!”

With a second pun, the Ignis’ face suddenly twisted into an exaggerated perverted expression as his hand reached towards the lid that kept Roboppy’s USB port hidden. The robot simply stood there, with a slightly embarrassed expression appearing on her display, already used to Ai’s antics. Normally, she would have scolded Ai for using that forbidden word, but the programming he’d inserted into her code was making her realizes how pointless that task would prove to be; plus, right now, that was the least important part regarding the context her sensors analyzed. It was weird, to feel this sort of emotion— not to mention feeling _any_ sort of emotion at all. However, things wouldn’t proceed as they normally did, since Ai simply took out a USB drive and plugged it into Yusaku’s computer instead.

“… What is Master Ai doing? I thought Master was going to—”

“Eheheh, naughty robot! We can’t do _that_ while Yu is home! I’ll modify your programming all you want tomorrow, but not now,” the sentient AI’s expression was now a full-fledged mocking one, as though he’d expected this sort of reaction. No, in fact, it was more as though he’d wanted to get that exact reaction.

Of course, along with those _emotions_ , Roboppy was also able to feel _frustration_ now, which was quickly shown through her short-lived grunt of complaint. Her anger wouldn’t last long, though, as Ai would put on a few episodes of a soap opera he’d downloaded in a _completely_ legal way.

“We have to finish watching this series, don’t you think? I need to know what happens! Do you think his brothers will accept their marriage?”

If there was something Ai really liked about the human world, it was their creativity when it came to entertainment. In the Cyberse World, though it sometimes pained him to remember, there wasn’t much to do other than play around with Linkuriboh and enjoy the scenery. It was peaceful, sure, but the human world had so many more things to enjoy— to him, it felt almost magical. If he had to point what made humans so different from the Ignis, it’d be one simple thing: their irrationality. Their capability to make all these useless distractions that made day-to-day life fun was the reason why humans were so enjoyable, compared to the Ignis’ completely rational point of view. There’s only so much data can do: data may be able to optimize your life, but it can’t make your life happy. Is it possible to live in an optimal way while being happy?

“No. Their brothers wouldn’t accept their sibling to marry such a poor person. It wouldn’t make sense from an economic standpoint.”

That was a boring answer, but a true one at that. Those brothers didn’t care about the love blooming between their sibling and someone else, they cared about how _rational_ the decision was in respect to their own ideals: because of that, it was impossible to reach a common ground. How could someone guided by rationality make a deal with someone guided by irrationality? And, if that deal couldn’t be made, who was in the right between the two? There was no obvious answer, and there wouldn’t be one. Both sides weren’t meant to agree. They were meant to fight. Somehow, that thought gave Ai’s non-existent heart a sharp stab, who winced in response.

“I think they’ll understand,” Ai quickly said, glancing towards the images in the screen, that hadn’t stopped moving for a few minutes now. “Sooner or later, they’ll understand that not everything about life is the way they see it.”

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Roboppy said, tilting her head slightly towards the side.

“It wouldn’t make sense to a stupid AI,” the Ignis shrugged.

On what side would Yusaku be? Ai found himself asking that very quickly, surprising even himself. His thoughts turned towards the teenager very often, especially now that he was acting so weird compared to the usual Yusaku. The Ignis didn’t even feel himself disconnecting from the world as he leaned back and his head was taken over by images of the interactions he’d held with the blue-haired boy; before he knew it, he was too busy thinking of him again. Perhaps the problem wasn’t with Yusaku, but with how he was attempting to tackle the situation: maybe the reason why he didn’t notice his own change was because of its own _irrationality_. There probably wasn’t a rational answer to how distant Yusaku was being lately, and yet Ai had been attempting to look at it like that. Instead, maybe he should simply be there for his Originator, spend some time attempting to crack down those walls Yusaku had built. Sometimes, the best way to deal with things is the most stupid way available.

“What are you doing, spread on the floor like that?” asked a voice coming from directly above him.

It took Ai a few seconds to process what was going on, for his view to unblur and notice that the teenager he’d been thinking about was standing right above him. Looking around as quickly as he could, he noticed Roboppy had already gone back to her charging station, and that the soap opera had been paused. Damn, he’d gotten lost in thoughts.

“Not much, just taking in some fresh air from that Duel Disk,” the Ignis closed his eyes and shrugged. “Though, _Yu_ should clean the room a little bit! _Ai_ think it’s starting to get a bit musty in here, open the window a little bit!”

Though Ai had said that to change the topic of the conversation, going as far as to cover his non-existent nose, the artificial intelligence really did think the scent of the room was starting to make the fact it’d remained shut for a long time obvious. Yusaku simply rolled his eyes in response and opened the window, only to drop on the bed nonchalantly. The Ignis glanced at his Originator, before entering the Duel Disk once more and getting ready for night maintenance. However, there was something that prevented him from fully leaving, a certain weight in his chest that struggled to let him simply leave Yusaku for the night; though his feet were already sinking into the cybernetic space of the device, Ai stepped out one more time.

“Hey, Yu—”

“Yeah, Ai?” the teenager asked from the bed, already wrapped up in his own blanket with half-closed eyes.

At that moment, the Ignis’ resolve faltered slightly. He turned around, wanting to say a few simple words, ones that really shouldn’t take as much as effort as they did. However, the words were drowned by the distance between them both— no, they never managed to leave Ai’s head in the first place: from his position, he couldn’t even see Yusaku’s face, as though the one who would receive any words he said wasn’t there in the first place. The caliginosity of the room camouflaged them both from the eyes of the other, allowing only the vague formless shadows to appear and destroy the line that connected their glares into a feeble string. The moon’s brightness could not get through the walls of the curtain covering the window, so the night is everything that remained between them: no stars, no light, only the black abyss that absorbed everything that resembled a glimmer of light. The Ignis felt a sense of irrational apprehension; everything outside his code was annihilated by the midnight nothingness, so he returned to the Duel Disk and waved his hand dismissively.

“Nothing.” 

With his uncaring tone, there was no room to believe anything was wrong, so Yusaku simply stayed silent and fell into a deep sleep moments later. Unluckily, Ai didn’t have the same fate: the weight he felt wasn’t gone, so he stayed awake, looking at his Originator with a meditating expression. Hours passed and passed, and yet sleep didn’t get to the purple AI, who gave up trying to do so at this point, it’d just be an uneventful night with—

“Stop…”

“Huh?” Ai stood up slowly, narrowing his eyes to look at the one who said those words. “… Yusaku?”

He’d heard that voice far too many times to mistake it for someone else’s: it was Yusaku’s voice, he was more than sure. But, shouldn’t he be sleeping? Why did it sound like he was in pain? Normally, the blue-haired boy’s voice didn’t convey any sort of emotion, instead being a stoic one. And yet, that whisper wasn’t feeble nor emotionless at all.

“Help…”

That whisper was loud enough to make Ai’s eyes widen, looking at the teenager from a distance. As low as it was said, it wasn’t gentle nor clean: every letter carried a grunt that scraped against his pharynx, that made him grit his teeth and whimper a few seconds after. As though there was something painful in his chest, something he couldn’t get out of his lungs with simple breaths, the teenager clutched his fist against it and pressed his eyelids together tightly, only to reveal a few tears that dripped onto the pillow below. His inhales and exhales were no longer rhythmical and quiet. Instead, Yusaku took every ounce of air as though it’d be his last, not daring to empty his own lungs until a sharp pain forced him to, only to start the process all over while hugging his own blanket more tightly. From his position, Ai could also see the sweat building up in his partner’s forehead, as though whatever was happening exhausted him to no end. His cries and whimpers echoed in the Ignis’ head, who didn’t know what to do: he wanted to wake Yusaku up, but he didn’t know what to tell him once he did; he wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how; he wanted to do _anything_ , but he didn’t know _what_. Instead, for the rest of the night, he stayed awake, watching Yusaku tossing and turning in his sleep.

As much as he covered his own eyes or ears, he couldn’t stop himself from feeling the other’s pain, and his own inability to do anything to stop it. Eventually, the nightmare faded away from reality, slipping into Ai’s mind in the form of one single thought.

**He had to help Yusaku.**


	2. Stuck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sort of wanted to do a liiiiittle bit more with this chapter, but if I moved on with what I'm planning to do next, this chapter would be way too long and feel too loaded, so I decided to split it up into two separate chapters! This one took a bit longer to write due to being busy, but I should be able to write way more in the coming days!
> 
> My objective is finishing this in two weeks tops. I have everything planned, I just need to write it into actual narration/dialogue. 
> 
> Overall, while I'm not *completely* satisfied with this chapter, I feel like a more calm one will ease you into... whatever is going to happen in the future! Who knows? Either way, I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it! I already have ideas for future fics I want to write for when it comes to VRAINS, so look forward to that!

_No matter how many times the poor boy attempted to knock on the walls, he never received an answer. Even the voice he occasionally heard was silent now, making him feel completely alone, abandoned between the claustrophobic space of the room that had become his new home over the last few days. Days? Maybe weeks, maybe months. There was no way to tell; not a single clock to look at, not a tick-tock to measure each second with, only the artificial light of a few light bulbs on the ceiling of that white cage. Each day, the blue-haired boy felt his grip on reality starting to slip away: all colors that weren’t that bleachy white felt like something he’d made up in his delirious mind, which was being driven to its limit through the lack of proper alimentation and interaction with the outside world._

_The young boy had attempted to escape multiple times: scratching the surface of the floor to the point where his nails bled, throwing himself against each and every inch of that place, but nothing seemed to work. Every time he tried, he simply hurt himself further, so he eventually stopped trying. The only way he could heal the pain was to forget about it, to sleep and hope that the next time he woke up, he’d be in his own bed. But that never happened. That hope was soon replaced by tears and cries that tore at his own throat until there were no longer any more feelings he could express through his own exhaustion._

_Calling it a ‘cage’ probably didn’t make it justice. This was a world in itself, an inescapable universe in which he was the only inhabitant, because those walls didn’t allow any color to break their impenetrable barrier. Only sometimes did he hear the echoing voice of another boy, reminding him to think, to keep thinking, to keep living; as though some godly force was making its way through that white, reminding him that there was a world to look forward to._

_“Think of three things,” it said with a pleading tone, as though his own savior was on the verge of tears too. “Think of three things to keep fighting!”_

_Was the owner of those words also suffering the same fate he was? Was everything just a part of his delirious subconscious? Regardless of what the answer to those questions was, soon enough, it became the only thing keeping him sane enough to continue breathing, to continue chewing the food he was given, to continue sleeping no matter how little._

_And, especially, to continue dueling._

**_LP have reached 0. GAME OVER. Punishment time._ **

_“Wait, no! No! I-I almost had it this ti_ _—!”_

_Though the boy attempted to protest, as he always had done, his yells were cut short as the VR set he was currently wearing delivering an electrical shock that made that young child scream in agony instead._

_“Stop! Help!”_

_His eyes hurt, his ears hurt, his skin felt numb, his body felt too weak to remain standing up. The boy fell down to the ground with a painful thud, attempting to gather enough strength to remove the device from his face. However, due to the way his body was currently twitching and shaking, it was impossible to push or pull that headset away; the poor victim of the machine’s abuse kept convulsing frequently, unable to hold back his own saliva from escaping through the corners of his lips in a foamy mess. He was on the brink of losing consciousness, but he wasn’t ever given that favor: he remained awake, feeling every spark coursing through his body and burning every part it touched until the pain was replaced by a feeling of numbness. At that point, it felt as though he were floating, as though that godly force was separating him from the realm of the living to escape that demonic cage._

_But that never happened: he was forced to stay alive, removing the VR headset once the pain had become manageable enough, only to witness that claustrophobic space again, those white walls, that cage, that universe of nothingness._

_“Stop, stop,” the child hugged his own knees, sitting against the wall as he sobbed uncontrollably. “Let me out, please…”_

_One: he had to get out to meet his parents again. Two: he had to meet the one who kept speaking to him. Three: he wanted to go back to the happy days from before. And yet, as he looked towards the headset that had now been thrown to the floor_ —

* * *

Yusaku’s eyes suddenly opened widely, being forced to take in the sight of a ceiling he was familiar with. It took him a few seconds of turning his head towards each side to realize he wasn’t stuck inside that white hell anymore, that he was safe inside his own room, enveloped by the warmth of his own blanket. Once he managed to reach that conclusion, the teenager closed his eyes once more to let out a deep sigh. Slowly coming back to his senses, the wetness of the pillow below his head became obvious; Yusaku rubbed his face with his right hand and looked at it, only to find it wet with what had probably been his own sweat and tears. Groaning, he stood up and began heading towards the bathroom with sluggish steps, not quite sure if he was ready for the day.

If that nightmare was how the world was planning to greet the day with, it clearly wasn’t going to give him a break anytime soon.

“Morning, Yu!”

As soon as he took his first step, Ai’s indistinguishable voice called out to him. That normal greeting, though, felt weird to the blue-haired teenager. Not only because they rarely said anything to each other in the morning, but because of the AI’s tone of voice: he was speaking faster than usual, as though there was a sense of urgency in saying those two simple words. And yet, when Yusaku turned around to face him, he didn’t seem scared nor panicked. His expression was, instead, full of concern.

“Morning, Ai.”

“How did you sleep?” Ai frantically asked as soon as Yusaku replied, which caused the young duelist to raise an eyebrow in response.

“… I slept well,” he lied.

Something about the purple Ignis’ behavior was bothering him, but he couldn’t really pin-point what exactly; why was he so on-edge so early in the morning? At this time, he’d normally be performing some strange modification in several machines he found lying around the room. In fact, that wasn’t the only strange thing about the situation: why was he outside the Duel Disk so early? Had he not taken his regular maintenance break? That would certainly explain a few things.

Regardless, the teenager turned around and—

“That’s good, I slept really well too, actually. I had a dream, you see? Why, I’ve almost become a full-on human at this point!” the purple creature rushed a few more sentences as though he didn’t want to stop the conversation so quickly, even though Yusaku was clearly not adding much to it himself, simply limiting himself to give a concise answer to proceed with his day.

“… I see,” Yusaku said, entering the bathroom. However, he soon stepped out for a mere second, just to add something to his earlier statement. “You’re a terrible actor, you know?”

With that, the bathroom and the bedroom’s space became isolated from each other, a single door separating them. Even though Ai could open the door if he wanted to, he chose not to: the blue-haired boy’s statement seemed to be final, an end to the conversation the artificial intelligence had attempted to start. Now that he was nowhere in Yusaku’s sight, the Ignis sighed and dropped that forced expression of enthusiasm; he’d been awake the entire night, looking at Yusaku’s constant tossing and turning, thinking about how he could approach him. And yet, the only thing he’d gotten in return was a couple of words and mental exhaustion.

Even though they lived together, the worlds they inhabited couldn’t be more different. It felt as though there was always something standing between them, a challenge they couldn’t get past. But the Ignis was determined: if he wanted to help Yusaku, he had to start pushing back when the teenager pushed him away. However, he had to be indirect about his methods; the moment his stubbornness kicked in, it’d be impossible to get through his walls. Ai turned around and looked towards the window, watching the golden glow of the sun crawl its way through the curtain. With a single press of a button, that cloth moved towards the right, allowing the brightness of the day to resonate with the artificial intelligence’s own yellow eyes.

“Eheh! Here we go, Yu!”

“Where exactly are we going?” that voice made Ai yelp and jump up in the air, falling to the ground on his back.

“Yu! That scared me! You almost gave me a heart attack…”

“I’m guessing you’ll be fine then, considering you don’t have a physical heart,” Yusaku’s lips momentarily curved upwards when making that joke, only to regain its usual straightness moments after.

The teenager’s smiles never lasted much, but their rareness only made them all the more rewarding to the sentient AI. It was clear to see that Yusaku still wasn’t in the best of moods: the way he’d woken up, the fact that his smile felt so weak. Everything pointed towards the fact he felt bad over something. Was it that nightmare? Was it something Ai was unaware of? Regardless, he’d managed to make the blue-haired boy smile, even if just for a few seconds. Giving himself a metaphorical pat on the back, Ai stood up proudly and placed his hands on his hips.

“I can’t believe you would say something so cruel,” the Ignis said in a comical tone, not really bothered by Yusaku’s statement. To someone else, it might have sounded cold, but he knew there was no harm intended. Climbing up the desk in order to enter the Duel Disk, giving him the short amount of time needed to think of what to say. “Can we go out? There are some things I want to do.”

“Things? If you want to buy something, you can just use the Internet, you know?”

“No, no! It’s not that. I just need to collect some data, you know?” Ai scratched the back of his head, taking a short glance towards the window.

Though the artificial intelligence’s body language was easy to read, Yusaku didn’t pay enough attention to notice the fact he was lying. Instead, the teenager scratched his chin while looking up, concentrated on finding an excuse to say ‘no’ to Ai’s request. Considering it was Sunday, he wasn’t planning on leaving the house, as they normally stayed behind and tweaked their Cyberse deck for future duels. However, since nothing came to mind, he simply shrugged and sighed in resignation.

“What kind of data do you need?”

“Since I’m an AI, I need to learn about humans in order to make better predictions in duels, so that I can be more helpful,” he began explaining, raising his right index finger to the air and closing his eyes. “Therefore, I want to observe what other humans do in their daily lives! Emotional and cultural data can be surprisingly helpful when it comes to learning about someone’s playstyle. For example, certain regions of the world might lean towards playing a certain type of deck more than others.”

“Can’t you do that from home? You can probably find a bunch of videos to get an idea of that, don’t you?” Yusaku groaned, already walking over to his closet and tossing some random clothing on top of the bed. He knew that, no matter how much he complained now, Ai wouldn’t give up until they went out. “Actually, don’t bother answering. Let’s just get this over with and come home early. I don’t really like being out when I don’t need to.”

“So cold…” the AI hugged himself and exaggerated a shiver, only to laugh and dive right into the Duel Disk’s screen.

The boy picked some casual-looking clothes: a white shirt, a burgundy red sweater and some black jeans would look good enough, right? Truth be told, when it came to getting dressed in something other than his school uniform, he was completely clueless. Grabbing the sweater by one of the sleeves and lifting it up revealed how much dust had gathered in the tinted cotton of the clothing, but he didn’t feel like putting effort into picking something else. Instead, with a few violent shakes, some gray particles came off and fell onto the wooden floor. After repeating the same process with his jeans, Yusaku lazily slipped inside those duds and wrapped the Duel Disk’s straps around his wrist before looking at himself in the bathroom’s mirror.

“Your hair is a mess,” Ai snorted, his upper body emerging from the display.

Yusaku rolled his eyes and playfully flicked the program’s synthetic body playfully, without any intention of actually hurting him. Ai wasn’t wrong, really. With the hair gel in one of the nearby drawers and a few swipes —or, who was he kidding, way more than a few— here and there, everything would be in order. After that was said and done, the teenager climbed up the stairs and left the apartment, not knowing what sort of things Ai was planning to have them do.

Though Ai expected the sun to blind them with its warm and bright rays as soon as they left through the door, clouds had begun to gently move between the light and the ground, sedating the city with bleak shadows as Yusaku took his first steps towards a random direction. The streets were inhabited by the sounds of footsteps and whispers of families and children that roamed around Den City, along with the multiple vehicles that sped up and stopped to the rhythm of traffic lights placed next to every crosswalk. The teenager began crossing the street as soon as the light of the machine turned green, looking to the left and then to the right.

“So, where should we go first, Ai?” Yusaku asked, raising his wrist in order to get closer to Ai. “Considering you want to investigate our culture, I’m guessing you want to go to a museum, or some other place like that? There’s one with a few displays on the history of dueling next to—”

“Starbucks!”

Despite how simple that word was, it managed to single-handedly paralyze and leave Yusaku in a state of confusion. Glaring at Ai with a raised eyebrow, he expected the AI to laugh and say that he was joking, but that didn’t appear to be the case; the other had a completely serious expression— or, rather, a smug grin that didn’t have any intentions of changing its words any time soon. It wasn’t until a car horn shocked him back into consciousness that Yusaku realized he was standing in the middle of the road, stopping the clearly annoyed drivers from continuing their wayfaring, so he integrated himself back into reality and ran awkwardly to the other side. Once he was free from that hell, the teenager sighed and looked at Ai once more.

“We are _not_ going to a Starbucks. I can’t see how that would give you any sort of ‘emotional or cultural data’,” he quoted the artificial intelligence, a tone of suspiciousness accompanying his gesture.

“Uh,” Ai thought for a few seconds. Shit, he had to think of an excuse, fast. “… I need to drink my morning co—”

“Computer programs don’t _drink_ coffee.”

Rats! Exposed once more! If he wanted to fool Yusaku, he’d have to use a more convincing lie; not only was it impossible to convince the teenager to get close to someone else within a 10-mile radius, but it would be a difficult endeavor to make up something that sounded rational, considering his knowledge on AI. With a few glances towards each side, he searched for a way out. It felt impossible, but as soon as he spotted the sign on the window of a café, the answer hit him like a bunch of bricks falling from the sky.

“Free Wi-Fi!”

“Huh? We can already access the Internet from home, so why would I get out of my room just to go to a café to do the exact same thing?”

“No, no! You don’t get it!”

The 16-year-old looked at his partner, confused on what he meant. Was there something he wasn’t seeing? Was there some sort of significance or advantage that he didn’t know of? The only thing he knew is that Ai had been acting strange for the few hours they’d been awake for, and that he didn’t know what the purple creature was planning to do.

“If we connect to a public Wi-Fi, I could get information from the other people who _also_ connect to it. I could get information regarding the decks they’re looking for, the cards they’re seeking to buy…”

Admittedly, that explanation was certainly reasonable; however, Yusaku still felt like it was some sort of excuse, hiding some bigger intentions that he still wasn’t aware of. The more he looked at Ai, the more he thought something was up: ever since he’d come back, he couldn’t look at Ai with the same eyes he once did. He didn’t know why that was, but looking at the other made his head spin in all sorts of directions: a confusing mix of anger, sadness, happiness… And yet, he didn’t know what the cause of those emotions were. Perhaps that was just his own mind playing mind tricks, as it usually did when it came to interacting with anyone. If that were the case, wouldn’t it be better to play along for the moment, allowing the other to do what he wanted? For some reason, he couldn’t get behind that train of thought. It felt as though he were being dragged into something he didn’t _want_ to be dragged into, which was more than likely the case. It felt as though he were stuck with Ai and his own conflicting emotions.

With a defeated and irritated sigh, Yusaku shook his head.

“Fine, let’s just… go.”


End file.
